It’s the birthday of filmmaker Les Blank, born in Tampa, Florida (1935). He went to Tulane in New Orleans, studied English, and went off to graduate school in Berkeley. He tried to be a writer, but everything he wrote was rejected by publishers. He thought he should stay in graduate school and become a teacher instead, but after his marriage failed, he couldn’t concentrate in any of his classes. He dropped out, but he couldn’t find a job doing anything — he even failed the intelligence test required to get a job as a bill collector. Then he saw a film by Ingmar Bergman, and it changed his life. He said: “When I saw The Seventh Seal for the first time I was in a pretty low state — he showed me a world where someone was worse off then me. And he showed me that art and beauty can come from the worst misery of the human experience.” So he decided to become a filmmaker.